Every winter around this time, Sports Illustrated writer Tom Verducci publishes his list of young pitchers most likely to fall victim to the dreaded Year-After Effect. Frequently known as "The Verducci Effect" and based on theories advanced by former Oakland A's and New York Mets pitching coach Rick Peterson, the Year-After Effect states that pitchers under 25 whose workloads increase by more than 30 innings from the previous season are more likely to suffer arm injuries in the subsequent season. Verducci stresses that the specific numbers should be seen as guidelines rather than hard-and-fast rules.

Limiting young pitchers' innings increases is now common practice in baseball, most famously exercised by the Washington Nationals when they shut down 24-year-old ace Stephen Strasburg in early September, shelving him for their entire postseason run. And the idea seems to make sense on the surface. The only issue is there's no concrete evidence that the Year-After Effect actually exists.

Over at Baseball Prospectus, Russell Carleton uses major and minor league stats dating back to 2006 in conjunction with that site's injury database to try to eliminate the sample-size and confirmation biases that seem to perpetuate talk of the Verducci Effect. He writes:

The real story is that pitchers in general tend to get hurt. If about a quarter of young pitchers spend time on the DL, then any list of young pitchers made before a season, even one drawn at random, will have several victims of injury. It's not being under 25 and overworked. It's being a pitcher that's the problem.

Verducci's list of at-risk pitchers for 2013 includes Strasburg – despite the Nats' best efforts – as well as Chris Sale, Jarrod Parker, Jose Quintana, Joe Kelly, Chris Rusin, Matt Harvey, Alex Cobb, Felix Doubront, Dan Straily and Andrew Werner. Undoubtedly, a couple of those pitchers will get hurt or prove ineffective at some point in 2013. When they do, undoubtedly, baseball fans around the nation will nod knowingly and whisper, "The Verducci Effect."

But pick any other group of 11 starters that threw 160 or more effective innings in 2012 and it's a safe bet a couple will get hurt or be generally crummy in 2013. At one point not too long ago, Brandon Webb seemed about the most likely pitcher in the Majors to throw 220-plus strong innings at a season's outset. On Monday, Webb retired at 33 after spending four seasons trying to recover from a shoulder injury suffered in April, 2009.

On Tuesday, the St. Louis Cardinals announced that 37-year-old right-hander Chris Carpenter is unlikely to pitch in 2013 due to numbness in his shoulder. Carpenter missed nearly two full seasons with shoulder injuries in his late 20s, then recovered to throw three consecutive excellent seasons from 2004-2006. Then he missed nearly two full seasons with elbow injuries and recovered to throw three consecutive strong seasons from 2009-2011. This season will likely mark his second in a row mostly missed due to injury, which suggests – per his pattern – he's got three healthy years to follow. Only it doesn't work like that, especially for pitchers approaching 40.

Pitching is really hard, and really, really hard on the body, and teams are smart to be cautious with their prized young arms. But there's no foolproof formula yet proven to prevent pitchers from getting injured except limiting their innings to zero. And given that every pitcher in the majors and minors and college and high school is his own unique snowflake with his own strengths and weaknesses and mechanics and ligaments, it seems unlikely we'll ever find one blanket solution.

Maybe in 50 years someone will figure out a way to identify the pitchers capable of throwing 300 innings a season without getting injured, the way Cy Young once did. Or maybe by then, the 200-inning season will be a long-abandoned relic of turn-of-the-Millennium baseball. But we don't get to either place by harping on what Carleton calls "a case of speculation mixed with a really poor understanding of the scientific method."